


dead man walking

by softvoicesdie



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe, Fix-It, Gen, Time Travel, Time Travel Fix-It, all the potters are a bit emotionally stunted, but that's okay, didn't expect to develop an emotional attachment to bathilda bagshot but here we are, i just really love jily, lily is going to skin petunia alive, sort of canon compliant before poa, the fix-it no one asked for
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-06
Updated: 2020-12-11
Packaged: 2021-03-09 23:41:59
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,318
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27914704
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/softvoicesdie/pseuds/softvoicesdie
Summary: When You-Know-Who tries to kill Lily and James Potter, they don't expect to wake up twelve years in the future in the Godric’s Hollow house marred by years of decay. Lily is halfway through a plea to Voldemort and James is crying out to Lily totake Harry and runand it takes them a few seconds to realise that the threat is gone, they’re safe, he’s gone, butwhat’s happened to the house, andHarry, oh dear Merlin, where is Harry.
Relationships: James Potter/Lily Evans Potter
Comments: 38
Kudos: 140





	1. Chapter 1

Lily woke up with her face pressed against Harry’s bedroom carpet. For a hazy second she was reminded of how she had always hated that carpet, itchy and dated as it was, and she wondered idly why she hadn’t done something about it yet. Then James screamed her name from the front room and her brain shuddered back into the present; before she could blink she was halfway through a plea to Voldemort and James was crying out to _take Harry and run, Lils, there’s still time_. 

It took her a second to realise the conspicuous absence of anything Dark Lord shaped in the bedroom; then she saw the empty cot and her world cracked open like it had been cleaved with an axe and she thought she might die from the pain of it. _Harry, oh dear Merlin, where was Harry?_

She barely heard James’s footsteps on the stairs, barely registered the way he crumbled to his knees in the doorway. His cries, she thought dully, might be the worst thing she’d ever heard.

“What have we done?” she whispered to the room at large. 

The room which, she was beginning to notice through her stupor, didn’t look quite right (and it wasn’t just because of the lack of Harry -- or, for that matter, the lack of sociopathic murderer).

For starters, the blankets looked distinctly moth-eaten; those holes definitely hadn’t been there when she’d put Harry to bed earlier. Every surface was coated in dust and grime -- neither she nor James were particularly talented at cleaning spells, but they certainly weren’t that bad -- and was that moss growing along the ceiling? With a start she realised the entire back wall was missing, and she marvelled that she hadn’t detected the wind whistling through the gap left behind.

In the hall she was met with a similar scene; one wall had almost caved in and the others were buckling under water damage. Spiders had taken up residence in every available alcove, scuttling away under her feet as she walked.

“James,” she said, distantly proud of the way her voice didn’t waver. “Come here a second.”

She felt his warmth at her back in a matter of seconds, and when she turned to look at him, he was staring at the room with wild eyes.

“What the bloody _fuck_ happened, Lily?”

“I thought he killed you,” she said. 

“What if he did?”

“What do you mean?”

“What if this is some kind of afterlife? And Harry is still, you know,” he gestured vaguely at the ground, “ _down there_?”

“That doesn’t explain why the house is all overgrown. I mean, I suppose I thought Heaven would be a little more…you know…clean?”

“Yeah,” James said, ashen-faced. “It’s not the best theory. But it’s sort of the only one I’ve got right now.”

Lily suddenly moved to the window, and it was all she could do to keep her legs from buckling underneath her.

“James,” she said faintly, “if we’re in the afterlife, why’s there a memorial for us in the street?”

She could tell the moment he saw it too by his sharp exhale, the way his hands clutched at her.

“Lils,” he choked out, “I might be wrong, but that memorial doesn’t look very, well, recent.”

“We need to find a newspaper,” she said suddenly. She grabbed hold of his hand and the feel of nails digging into skin might have been the only thing tethering her to the earth (if this was the earth, still, and not some kind of terrible liminal space).

It was nice to see that there was still a newspaper stand where one had always been, not far down the street, but the relief at some vague semblance of normalcy quickly vanished at the sight of the date. 

Lily had always put a lot of faith into the written word, and so she wasn’t going to cast any aspersions on the sacred institution of the newspaper. Even if it did say it was exactly twelve years later than it had been the last time she checked.

At least that explained the state of the house.

James, though, had no such trust in the Daily Telegraph. “Maybe this is just one of Sirius’s more elaborate jokes,” he said, sounding as if he didn’t much believe that himself.

“And what, he dressed up as You-Know-Who and stole our baby? Even Sirius wouldn’t go that far.”

“I’ll call him on the mirror,” James said. “I can’t believe I didn’t think of it sooner.”

They both waited with bated breath, but there was no answering face in the enchanted mirror, just their own dishevelled faces flickering up at them.

“He might just be busy,” Lily said, not meeting James’s eyes.

“Yeah, maybe.” It was obvious neither of them were buying it.

“We should have a closer look at the memorial,” Lily said, snapping back into action. She’d always had a fondness for solving puzzles, after all -- this one might have had higher stakes, but that was hardly important.

It was disconcerting to see themselves in stone, a granite Harry cradled in Lily’s granite arms.

“Do you think maybe we’re ghosts?” James whispered. “I mean, there wouldn’t be a memorial if we weren’t all dead, would there?”

“Do you feel dead?” Lily asked, dubious. “We don’t exactly look transparent.”

“S’pose not.”

“We’ll go back to the house, poke around a bit, then?”

James nodded his assent, and they walked the short journey back in silence, minds whirling. When Lily pushed the gate open, something seemed to unfurl from the ground, making the both of them startle.

It was a sign, covered in so much graffiti they could barely make out the words in the darkness. It said:

_On this spot, on the night of 31 October 1981,  
Lily and James Potter were presumed to have lost their lives.  
Their bodies were never found.  
Their son, Harry, remains the only wizard ever  
to have survived the Killing Curse.  
This house, invisible to Muggles, has been left  
in its ruined state as a monument to the Potters  
and as a reminder of the violence that tore apart their family._

Lily felt jubilation and shock and violent nausea all at once. Harry was beautifully, blissfully, impossibly alive. She and James were supposed to be dead. Harry had spent the last twelve years an orphan -- they had missed his first words, his Hogwarts letter, his _childhood_.

Beside her, she could see the same emotions playing across James’s face and she squeezed his hand. “He’s alive, James. That’s what matters.”

“Lils,” he said, “if he survived the Killing Curse, then You-Know-Who…”

“Is dead,” said a voice from behind them. “Or, at least, he was supposed to be.”

They jumped violently, in tandem, and jerked around. 

“Bathilda?” Lily said. 

It was a Bathilda Bagshot wizened by twelve more years of age, but Lily could have kissed her nonetheless.

“You don’t seem very surprised to see us,” James said, once he’d recovered from the shock of her arrival.

“I never believed that rubbish about you buggers being dead,” she croaked. “You were far too determined for a little curse from You-Know-Who to do away with you.”

They grinned at her, despite themselves. “I’d say that I missed you, Batty, but last I remember it’s only been a couple of weeks since we had tea together,” James said.

“Well, it’s been twelve bloody years for me,” Bathilda grumbled. “Least you could do is ask an old woman how she’s been.”

“Oh, come here,” Lily said, and wrapped the tiny woman in her arms. 

“Don’t go getting sentimental on me, Lily Potter.”

“Sorry,” Lily said. “It’s been a long night.”


	2. Chapter 2

Both James and Lily had long been of the opinion that there was very little tea with Bathilda Bagshot couldn’t fix. As it happened, that seemed to extend to time travel and the discovery of famous sort-of-orphaned sons who defeated dark lords.

Bathilda’s house was almost unchanged, save for a few new books cluttering the shelves, and the sight of her familiar kitchen table had never been so welcome. She put the kettle on, muttering to herself all the while ( _the youth of today, always choosing the most inconsiderate of moments to return from the dead_ ); Lily could see James hiding his smile in his hands.

She set two mugs and a plate of fruit cake down in front of them, along with a formidable glare and instructions to finish everything on pain of torture. They ate and drank in silence under Bathilda’s baleful gaze for a time before Lily braved speech.

“You said, before, that You-Know-Who was supposed to be dead.”

“Well, yes, rather. We thought he was for some time,” Bathilda said. “Though I’d wager Dumbledore suspected otherwise, Merlin knows I did. But he was gone for a decade -- somehow, when he cast the Killing Curse on Harry, it rebounded and hit him instead.”

“So how did he come back? The Killing Curse is rather, er, permanent, I would’ve thought,” James said.

“I only know what I’ve heard from Minnie McGonagall, and she herself hasn’t a clue. No doubt Dumbledore’s cooked up some grand theory that he refuses to share with the rest of us. The bastard’s been subdued for the moment, though -- in fact, it was your boy who did it.”

Lily dropped her cake. “Harry? But he must only be thirteen!”

Bathilda gave her a wry smile. “Was eleven at the time.”

“Bloody fuck,” James whispered. He and Lily exchanged bewildered glances. 

(It didn’t take much internal debate for Bathilda to determine she’d leave the story of the Basilisk for someone else.)

“What about the Order?” Lily asked.

“Disbanded. No need for it any more, is there? The Ministry can handle the few Death Eaters left well enough.”

“And all the old members?”

“Fine, for the most part. Half of them are Ministry lackeys nowadays, of course; turns out sticking it to the man isn’t all that profitable in the long run.” 

James took a breath before asking, “And Sirius? Remus? Peter?”

“Ah,” Bathilda said delicately. “Mr Lupin is fine. Teacher at Hogwarts, in fact, Defence. As for the other two, well, there’s no easy way to say this…”

Lily reached out to grasp James’s hand, heart in her throat.

“Mr Black is currently on the run. Mr Pettigrew is, well, dead.”

“On the run from what?” James choked out.

“Azkaban, of course,” said Bathilda. “You didn’t think he’d get away with what he did to you, did you?”

“What he did to us?” Lily said, new fear beginning to take up residence in her chest.

“Have you gone soft? I suppose it’s to be expected, time travel does funny things to the mind…Black gave you up, silly girl!”

The penny dropped.

“Fuck,” James said. “Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck.”

“Oh my God,” said Lily, who could be relied upon to revert to Muggle exclamations in times of crisis.

“Am I missing something?” Bathilda glanced warily between them.

“We switched secret keepers,” Lily said despondently. “Right before Hallowe’en. Didn’t even tell Dumbledore, we were so paranoid. It wasn’t Sirius.”

“If it wasn’t him, then who?” 

“Peter,” James muttered through gritted teeth.

“That _bastard_ ,” Bathilda said, mutinous. “Had the whole of Wizarding Britain heralding him for some kind of war hero. He got an Order of Merlin, for Morgana’s sake! Little bugger is lucky he’s dead; if there was a body then I’d bloody well kill him twice!”

“If there was a body?” Lily repeated.

“All that was left of him when Black was through was a finger. We thought Pettigrew had gone after Black in some noble gesture of revenge, but now I suppose it must have been the other way round…”

“You said Sirius was on the run from Azkaban,” said James suddenly. “How long…” He found that he couldn’t bring himself to finish the sentence.

“Twelve years,” Bathilda said grimly.

Lily and James shared a look of absolute despair.

“The whole country is looking for him, even the Muggles. Bloke knows how to hide, at least.”

“And he escaped from Azkaban?” James said.

“If anyone could, it’d be Sirius,” said Lily with a small, sad smile.

“At least, with the pair of you back, you can clear his name. Fudge might be a blithering idiot but he can’t deny what comes straight from the horse’s mouth.”

“Fudge?” Lily said. “That slimy little man?”

“Minister for Magic, nowadays.”

“Bloody hell,” said James. “ _I’d_ make a more competent Minister.”

“And that’s not saying much, when you can’t even manage to remember to take out the bins,” Lily muttered with a grin, forgetting herself for a second. 

James elbowed her. “You’re the woman who married me.”

They glanced up to see Bathilda watching them, a faint smile on her lips and her eyes bright. She quickly busied herself with the tea things before they could say a word. “Another cup, anyone?”

“Please,” said Lily, and James nodded.

“We’ll have to go to Dumbledore,” said Bathilda, once they were settled with fresh mugs and another thick slice of cake. “He’ll have some idea of how to proceed, even if he’s more barmy by the day.”

“You’re no spring chicken yourself, Batty,” James said, earning himself a frown.

“I’ll have you know, James Potter, that I’m just as sharp as I’ve always been.”

“Of course you are,” James agreed sagely.

An hour later, the two of them were tucked under the sheets in Bathilda’s spare room, curled around each other. The room had only a single bed, but they didn’t mind the cramped positions they found themselves in -- for the first time all night (and, Lily supposed, the first time in twelve years), they felt properly warm, properly safe, wrapped in each other’s arms.

“Do you think Harry’ll be glad to see us?” Lily asked sleepily.

“I hope so, Lils,” James murmured. “I really do.”


End file.
